


red grof

by aohatsu



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-08
Updated: 2020-04-08
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:41:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23537782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aohatsu/pseuds/aohatsu
Summary: “It’s been a long time,” Peter says, finally, his voice hoarse.“Yeah, that’s pretty obvious from where I’m standing, kid. You ready to explain what’s going on?”“There’s a lot,” Peter says, because there is, and he won’t lie about any of it, but he’s not even sure where to start. Morgan? Pepper and Happy? Peter’s degrees and Stark Industries? Spider-man and the Avengers? Gwen? Harry?All Peter can think of is how much he’s missed him.He clears his throat. “I’m, ah, twenty-six.”
Relationships: Peter Parker/Tony Stark
Comments: 14
Kudos: 313
Collections: Robot Rainbow 2020





	red grof

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pleurer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pleurer/gifts).



> This was supposed to be much shorter, but the words wouldn't stop.

It takes ten years.

It takes months to get home, even with Nebula there to help, because fixing a broken ship in space was just a little above Peter’s paygrade when he was sixteen, and so Earth isn’t their first stop.

It takes another two months to find Thanos, and twenty minutes for Carol to kill him while Wanda holds him down. It takes months longer to accept that they lost, that there’s no solution, no going back and saving everyone.

No fixing everything that’s gone wrong with one snap of a mad man’s fingers.

Aunt May is dead.

Mr. Stark is dead.

MJ is gone and Ned is alive but his parents aren’t, so he’s moved halfway across the country to live with his grandparents.

Peter moves into the bedroom Tony had set up for him at the compound. Happy and Pepper and Wanda are there, but it’s quiet like they aren’t, and it takes months to grieve.

It takes years to grieve.

He finishes high school online, when he can bother to concentrate. He enrolls in MIT, because Tony had put it in his will – his will, of all things – that Peter’s tuition is already paid for.

There was a brand new MIT sweater in a box in his room, and a welcome packet that Tony had ordered – step one in Tony’s plan to sway him, Pepper had said, hand on her stomach and leaning against his doorframe, her exhaustion clear in her small, sad smile.

It takes three months from then for Morgan Stark to be born, crying and crying and crying, and it takes four months after that for Peter to laugh again.

It’s another year and a half of studying and working in Tony’s lab for Peter to earn his first degree, and a few more for the next, and the next. It doesn’t take quite as long to build up a tolerance for Tony’s favorite wine, the kind he had stored in the cellar next to the lab, hundreds of bottles of it.

It takes five years altogether for Steve Rogers and Scott Lang to show up asking for a scientific miracle, and another year after that for Peter to drink so much that he gets sick with it, so sick that he throws the bottle and Dum-E spins away with a startled beep, and Peter breaks down, sobbing, because he doesn’t know how to make any of it work.

An hour after that, he cleans up the mess, drinks a glass of water, and wipes Dum-E down with oil for his joints, pincer whirling the whole time.

It takes another two years to graduate MIT with more degrees than he knows how to handle, and a another for him to tackle the idea of time travel again, with Pepper and Happy’s wedding only three months away and Morgan asking for stories about _Iron Man_ every night it’s Peter’s turn to put her to bed.

He designs a phone, sleek and light and fast.

He thinks Tony would have liked it, if he’d been around to see it.

It takes ten years altogether for Peter to figure it out.

Ten birthdays and two graduations Aunt May never got to see; nine-and-a-half years of a family Tony never got to have.

It’s a barbeque that connects the final piece, Steve and Bucky’s seventh anniversary, Bucky and Sam arguing over the cake and Steve sketching Carol and Natasha as they teach Morgan and Nathaniel how to really throw a punch, and Clint off to the side heckling them while offering to show Morgan how to shoot an arrow instead.

It isn’t time travel, exactly, that he figures out, but tracing energy through a linear pattern through space and snatching it up. Alright, it’s a little like time travel.

It takes two weeks to pull every stone out of – wherever he’s pulling them from. Other places. He doesn’t really care where they’re coming from, so long as they do what they’re supposed to.

Carol puts on the gauntlet, red and gold because Peter had made it from the Mark 67’s base design. Electrical—magical?—currents run up her arm. She grits her teeth and snaps her fingers and the world holds still for a too-long moment where Peter can’t breathe.

Carol is half-carried by Steve to sit down on the sofa, her arm darkened and torn up. She looks at Peter.

“Did it work?”

Peter looks around. Nothing seems different, but—

Clint’s phone starts ringing.

Everything starts pouring in after that. Phones ring, for those who still have the same ones as before. Wanda switches on the television, and it doesn’t take long before all the news channels are desperate to talk about what’s happening but struggling to describe a situation nobody understands yet.

Peter waits, heart in his throat.

Would Aunt May be at their old apartment? Peter had lost his old phone years ago, left it on that school bus and never got it back after they came back from another planet, half the world gone. Mr. Stark would be—he’d be on Titan, still, with that whole group of misfits Nebula and Groot had been a part of, and Doctor Strange would—

Doctor Strange will be able to get them home, or so Wong said when they’d talked to him before Carol used the gauntlet.

The waiting is horrible.

It’s been _ten years_.

It takes a few more moments for an orange light to suddenly open up in the middle of the compound, forming a sparking circle that the guy Peter remembers as, well, Peter, stumbles through, followed by the two friends of his that Peter doesn’t remember the names of, and then—

Mr. Stark, his suit struggling to form around him, the nano tech broken and torn apart. His stomach covered in blood, but the wound sealed like it’s been quickly healed over. He’s stumbling like the others, a hand held out, and Peter darts forward to grab hold of him.

Mr. Stark looks up, startled, nearly jerking backward. His eyes are wide, and get wider, and the first thing he says, incredulous and bleeding disbelief is Peter’s name.

Peter feels like he’s the one who wants to sag to the floor, now.

“Is that—Kid, you’re—how old are you?”

Peter swallows. He can’t stop staring at Mr. Stark’s face, at the way he hasn’t aged at all in the missing time between them, at the blood and the dirt and exhaustion and confusion in his eyes. At the barely-held onto desperation that Peter can only recognize because it’s the same thing he’s been feeling for ten years.

Mr. Stark can’t seem to look away from him either.

“It’s been a long time,” Peter says, finally, his voice hoarse.

“Yeah, that’s pretty obvious from where I’m standing, kid. You ready to explain what’s going on?”

“There’s a lot,” Peter says, because there is, and he won’t lie about any of it, but he’s not even sure where to start. Morgan? Pepper and Happy? Peter’s degrees and Stark Industries? Spider-man and the Avengers? Gwen? Harry?

All Peter can think of is how much he’s missed him.

He clears his throat. “I’m, ah, twenty-six.”

Mr. Stark glances up and down Peter’s body, taking in all the changes—from sixteen to twenty-six in less than a minute, Peter thinks—before he settles back into staring at Peter’s face again.

“Alright,” he says, finally. “That’s—that’s something. That’s ten years. I’ve been dead for ten years?”

He sounds incredulous, and that’s before he sits down with a heavy thump on the coffee table, putting his head in his hands. He looks up. “Everyone else?”

“They’ll all be back now, even if they—if they disappeared back then. I need to find my aunt,” Peter says, but doesn’t move to do it. Aunt May will come here, he knows, she’ll grab the nearest taxi and say, “Take me to the Avengers compound, now!” as soon as she realizes what’s going on, what Peter’s gotten himself mixed up in.

Mr. Stark is here right now, and he’s about to find out that his life is—the life he’d wanted is gone, now.

“Mr. Stark,” Peter says, quietly, leaning down. People are talking all around them, if they haven’t left to make desperate phone calls already. Steve is standing off to the side, but he hasn’t said anything yet, and Bucky elected not to be the first thing Mr. Stark saw when he came back, so he isn’t even in the room.

Mr. Stark looks up.

At some point, Peter had started to call him Tony in his head. Maybe because that’s how Pepper and Rhodey always referred to him. Tony.

Having him in front of him again, Peter feels sixteen again, like he’s a kid out of his depth, looking at the idol he’ll never be able to quite touch.

“Lay it on me, kid. What’s happened?”

“Pepper and Happy, uh, got married.”

Tony winces, and Peter bites his lip.

“That’s—yeah, that’ll take a minute… to process,” Tony mutters, looking down at his feet. He blows out a long breath, then asks, “Happy? You’re sure? Pepper and Happy?”

“I’m sure.”

“I’ll admit I wasn’t expecting that. But it’s fine. It’s fine. Ten years is—yeah. It’s fine. I’m glad they’re both—yeah. It’s fine.” He looks up at Peter again, face set like he’s determined to get through with the rest of it. “What else? That the worst of it? Did I go bankrupt? What’s with the face, Pete?”

Peter sucks in a breath; spits it out.

“You have a daughter. She’s nine. Her name is Morgan.”

There’s a beat. Then another. Slowly, Mr. Stark stands up.

“Mr. Stark—”

“Peter.”

Right.

Peter watches Mr. Stark leave the room, and he doesn’t follow him.

Steve takes a second, then comes over to stand next to Peter.

“You alright, Queens?”

Peter nods, because Mr. Stark is back. He’s better than alright.

Nothing else really matters, not in comparison. He smiles at Steve, though it probably doesn’t reach his eyes—Steve looks worried, anyway. “I’m going to go see if I can find my aunt, alright? Take care of Carol?”

Steve glances back at her, where she’s got her eyes closed and Maria is standing behind her, running a hand through her hair comfortingly. “Yeah, I can do that. You’ve done enough for today, kid. Go rest. Find your aunt.”

He does, after a few hours, end up finding Aunt May amidst the hundreds of others who have congregated outside of the Avengers compound, everyone wanting to know what’s going on and if the Avengers are going to do anything about it. (The logistics of so many people suddenly coming back to life are a little beyond Peter, honestly—that’s what Director Hill and Mr. Fury are for, not to mention King T’Challa who’d promised all sorts of aid if it meant getting his little sister back.)

Peter cries into her shoulder, and she cries into his—he’s so much taller than her now, it’s ridiculous—and neither of them wants to sleep until they’re falling asleep mid-conversation at the table in Peter’s room. He wakes up a little after three in the morning, and quietly picks her up and lays her down on the bed before slipping out so as not to accidentally wake her.

Mr. Stark is in the lab.

Peter’s not sure why he didn’t see that coming. Of course Mr. Stark is in the lab. It’s his lab, even if Peter’s the one who’s been using it for the past ten years. Even if everything is coded to him, even if F.R.I.D.A.Y. isn’t supposed to let anyone else in.

Of course she’d let Mr. Stark in.

“Hey,” Mr. Stark says, quiet. He has a wire cutter in his hands and half of a chest plate on the table in front of him. “You’ve got some good stuff over there. Nice work.”

Peter glances at the three spider suits he’s made over the years, flushes red a little at the compliment.

“Thanks.”

“I talked to the kid. Called Pepper, she put Morgan on the camera. Nine years old, smart as a whip. Hard to believe. Sang your praises, by the way.”

Peter smiles softly, thinking of Morgan and her Spider-man pajamas, her Iron Man plushie tucked under her chin. “She’s always asking for stories about you,” Peter says, and grabs a tool off the table to have in his hands.

“Absent father, all that. Makes sense. Never wanted kids. Didn’t want to be like my father. Now I’ve got one and I’m even worse. Missed every birthday.” Mr. Stark drops a piece of metal. In clangs loudly against the table, the sound loud in Peter’s ears. He flinches, then straightens his shoulders.

“Her tenth birthday’s in seven months, actually. So, not all of them.”

Mr. Stark snorts, then drags a hand down his face.

“I’ll have to buy her an entire zoo to make up for all the missed presents. Design her a flying castle. Something with unicorns. She had a hat on, with all the—pink, and the glitter. God, I have a daughter.” He eyes Peter. “And you. I hear I missed your graduation. Both of them. MIT, huh? Knew you’d blow them away.”

Peter grimaces.

“I couldn’t figure out how to undo it all. Scott had this idea, using quantum mechanics to go back in time and steal the stones—”

Tony rolls his eyes, puts up a hand.

“I’ll stop you there, kid. Time travel? Nobody could have figured that out. It’s impossible. You’d just end up turning Lang into a baby.”

Peter must be quiet for too long, because Tony raises an eyebrow.

“Did you turn Lang into a baby, Pete?”

God, it feels good to hear Tony say his name. Peter feels a rush go through him all over again, having all of Mr. Stark’s attention to himself for just a moment. Having Mr. Stark to himself.

Mr. Stark being back to even have.

“Not permanently,” Peter admits, and Mr. Stark huffs out a laugh.

“I’d have paid to see it.”

“You’d pay for lots of stuff.”

Tony holds out a screwdriver and says, “True. Alright, if you didn’t turn into Marty McFly, explain. How’d you do it?”

They tinker quietly in the lab until the morning light pokes through the windows. They don’t get anything important done, but Peter can almost feel the tension wash away from them both. This hasn’t changed. Them, just hanging out, talking, working together in the lab.

Well, Peter understands ninety percent more of what Tony is talking about, but—the feelings haven’t changed, not at all. He smiles, stupid happy, when Tony puts down the helmet and stretches, asking Peter, “Ready for a coffee run? I’m starving. Haven’t eaten in ten years, apparently.”

“I could make pancakes?” Peter offers, because he’s gotten extremely good at pancakes, waffles and French toast since Morgan turned three and decided breakfast foods were her favorite.

Tony turns back, already walking for the door, and grins, saying, “Peter Parker, my hero. I would kill for some pancakes.”

Peter can’t breathe, for just a second. He makes a fist with his hand, digging the nails into his palm.

“You’re mine, you know.”

Tony stops walking.

“I mean, you never stopped. Being my hero. I. You’re still. I still.”

Peter squeezes his eyes shut. Sixteen all over again, his stupid crush threatening to spill out of his mouth at every smile, every compliment, every touch of Mr. Stark’s hand on his shoulder.

“Yeah,” Mr. Stark says, after a long silence. “Yeah, I can tell. That’s, uh, some dedication right there, kid. Talk about loyalty.”

It takes Peter a second to remember the reference, and he looks at Mr. Stark when it clicks into place.

“Come on, kid,” Mr. Stark says. “You owe me pancakes.”

Peter makes him pancakes, and everyone else too as they slowly wake up and fill the kitchen and living room with Avengers, new and old and all their family and friends. Peter grins, even when Tony snorts at Steve’s wedding ring with nothing more than an, “Obviously. Was that actually a surprise to any of you?” before heading off to talk to Morgan over the phone again.

It doesn’t take ten years to work up the courage to ask Tony _—“Tony, kid. You’re twenty-six. Call me Tony.”_ —on a date. (He says yes.)

**Author's Note:**

> ............. and then some alternate reality Thanos attacks, most likely, but this time nobody dies, because I say so.


End file.
